Sturgeon about public sector jobs and said there were fears of cuts – claiming there were 3,000 fewer teachers compared to the previous administration - and asked what the SNP intends to do about this. Sturgeon said it was rich for Labour to criticise teacher numbers. Lamont said jobs will be going across

the whole public sector. She said Sturgeon is responsible for 4,000 NHS jobs going, among them 1,500 nursing jobs gone. She said1,200 of those jobs have been lost in the city of Glasgow. She asked what Sturgeon would do about it. The Deputy First Minister said the figures must be looked at in context. She said there are thousands more health professionals in the NHS compared to 2007. She says there will be an “absolute focus” on quality of

care and no compulsory redundancies. Lamont hit back, saying that the only

job in Glasgow Sturgeon cared about was her own. She said she was raising the issue the day after official statistics revealed 239,000 people are now out of work.

Lamont added: “We know she’s

on work-experience today, sampling the job she really wants more than anything else. But will she and the SNP stop fretting about their own prospects and start putting the people of Scotland first?” Deputy Conservative leader Murdo

Fraser said that despite previous promises that quango numbers would be cut, they remained high. He said that while thousands of public sector jobs are to go, is it not time to cut down on bureaucracy?

Sturgeon said the government has a proud record and has made positive steps on cutting bureaucracy and added, the Scottish Government has reduced the number of ministers, amongst other things. She said there is always more that can be done to cope in the tough economic climate, but said, surely the Conservatives should recognise the successes that have been achieved by the SNP administration. Mike Rumbles, standing in for Liberal

Democrat leader Tavish Scott, said there has been a long list of failures on delivering promises since 2007, including failures to deliver promises in his north-east constituency area, which encompassed the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route [AWPR]. “Why were projects in the north-east not taken seriously?” he asked. He also asked how Sturgeon rates the First Minister and how she would rate him for his term of government.

Sturgeon replied that she rates Alex

Salmond “very highly”. She added that the SNP was coming to the end of its “first term of government.” Rumbles asked if any projects, such

as the AWPR, would be started before the next election. Sturgeon said it is the subject of

court action and that the SNP had a good record of project delivery. Brian Adam asked if Sturgeon agrees

that Tory-Lib Dem cuts are too far, too soon.

Sturgeon said the biggest economic worry is the cut on capital spending. She asserted that “Labour cannot escape responsibility for that” as the previous administration. Conservative David McLetchie asked what cuts would not be “too far, too fast”. Sturgeon said the previous Labour

Government was at fault for the situation, but added the current Westminster Government plans were going to make the situation even worse.

First Minister’s Questions

9 September By George Thomson After Labour leader Iain Gray asked

the First Minister what engagements he had planned for the rest of the day, Alex Salmond announced that, alongside the other party leaders, he would be joining the Cardinal of Scotland to launch the new tartan that had been commissioned to celebrate the visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict to Scotland the following week. Gray then asked the First Minister

whether he had had the “privilege” of visiting the construction of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier at Rosyth or on the Clyde? Salmond admitted he had visited

neither site, but confirmed SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon was maintaining close contact with both management and unions as a result of threats to the project due to Westminster cuts. He said the Scottish Government

had accepted an invitation from the Ministry of Defence to attend a quadrilateral on the strategic defence review, but had been unable to confirm a date for the meeting. Salmond stressed the quadrilateral must take place as soon as possible, expressing concerns that decisions were not made before any such meeting. He said the Scottish Government had prepared a dossier to be shared with management and unions, and called for “maximum